POS1457 ANALYSIS OF WORLDWIDE RHEUMATOLOGY POSTGRADUATE TRAINING CURRICULA: A MAPPING EXERCISE TO INFORM THE DEVELOPMENT OF EULAR STANDARDS FOR THE TRAINING OF EUROPEAN RHEUMATOLOGISTS
Authors: A. Alunno, T. Avcin, C. Haines, F. Sivera, S. Ramiro, C. J. Edwards
Journal: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2022)

Background Previous work has highlighted considerable heterogeneity in the organization of postgraduate rheumatology training programs. EULAR strives to harmonise rheumatology training across Europe with defined standards of key aspects of training including knowledge, skills and professional behaviors. Objectives To analyse existing documents on postgraduate training in rheumatology and other related specialties available within Europe and the rest of the world. Methods As most documents were unpublished, key documents on specialty training in Rheumatology and 28 related specialties were retrieved by hand-search. We started with the collection of documents developed by UEMS (Europe), ACGME (USA), CanMEDS (Canada) and RACP (Australia). Then we searched for specialty training documents developed by other international Boards and we also sent emails to the boards or associations if no document could be found in their websites. Finally, we retrieved national documents from European Countries with a structured rheumatology training process, translated them into English using DeepL/Google translate and, in case of doubt, liaised with native speakers familiar with the documents. The content of all the above documents (including information about the structure of each document) was extracted into a standardized data extraction sheet. Results 133 documents were retrieved. UEMS, ACGME, CanMEDS documents were available for all the mapped specialties, while RACP documents were retrieved for only 18 specialties. No American or Canadian specialty board developed additional documents on training, while in Europe non-UEMS boards of 11 specialties did (Table 1). With regard to Rheumatology, 2 separate documents for adult and pediatric rheumatology training were available from UEMS and ACGME while one document on adult rheumatology training was retrieved for CanMEDS and RACP. Upon assessment of the content of these 133 documents, we observed that their organisation could be competence-based (48%), role-based (47%), or problem-based (5%). When focusing on Rheumatology, content was fairly similar across international curricula, but several differences emerged in national curricula. These were mainly related to national regulations (e.g. rheumatology training as part of internal medicine training) and a different definition of mandatory/optional competences. The number of listed competences in the rheumatology documents ranged from 18 to 196. Table 1. Documents retrieved and extracted for each specialty. Rheumatology national training documents are not listed. Specialty Europe USA Canada Australia ALL UEMS Other board ACGME Other board CanMEDS Other board RACP Other board Rheumatology x x x x 6* Allergology x x x x x 5 Anaesthesiology x x x 0 3 Cardiology x x x x x 5 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry x x x 0 3 Clinical Genetics x x x x 4 Dermatology and Venereology x x x x 4 Emergency Medicine x x x x 0 4 Endocrinology x x x x x 5 Gastroenterology x x x x 4 General practice x x x x 4 Geriatrics x x x x 4 Gynaecology and Obstetrics x x x 0 3 Infectious Diseases x x x x 4 Internal Medicine x x x x 0 4 Medical Oncology x x x x x 5 Nephrology x x x x x 5 Neurology x x x x 4 Occupational Medicine x x x x 4 Ophthalmology x x x 0 3 Orthopaedics x x x x 0 4 Otorhinolaryngology x x x 0 3 Paediatrics x x x x x 5 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation x x x x 4 Psychiatry x x x 0 3 Public Health Medicine x x x x 4 Radiation Oncology and Radiotherapy x x x x 0 4 Respiratory medicine x x x x x 5 Sport and exercise medicine x x x 0 3 TOTAL 30 11 30 0 30 0 18 0 119 *2 UEMS and 2 ACGME document on adult and pediatric rheumatology Conclusion We collected and analysed documents on specialty training in Rheumatology and other related specialties across a broad set of international sources. Most documents followed a competence-based or role-based framework; similarities and differences in the content of Rheumatology documents were detected. This mapping exercise informed the EULAR Task Force on the development of standards for the training of European rheumatologists. Disclosure of Interests None declared